Neanderpundit

I’ve been seeing a lot of shit about “the refugees couldn’t leave because they were so poor”, even seeing one site (scalzi) where they painted a sorry picture of how nobody understands what it’s like to be poor. No, I won’t link to it, it’s horsecrap.
Heres’ the thing. I’ve been broke. I grew up broke. When I was growing up, dad worked, mom worked. They didn’t both work because they wanted to have extra money to play with, they worked to make ends meet, which we barely did. They both worked, and dad worked a lot of long, hard hours, and his health was never good, because he wanted to do better. He wanted to make sure his fathers hospital bills got paid. Dad wanted to make sure his brothers and sisters had food in their bellies and roofs over their heads. Mom worked so we could go to catholic schools and get a decent education, as the local schools in the 60’s had already begun to go to hell. Dad drove a truck all the time, not because it was cool, because back then it was not, but because he was always helping someone with some project or another.

We ate well. We did so because mom carried a purse heavy with coupons everywhere she went. Because we always had a garden, and when we could buy produce cheap, in season,. we’d buy like crazy and cook and can until we all sweated pounds off. Dad would stand with the pantry door open and look at the rows and rows of canned green beans, tomatos, pears, peaches, assess how well we’d fare that winter. We bought eggs for pennies a dozen from a local farmer, picked them from under the chickens themselves, candled them in his basement. We brought our own egg cartons because the farmer charged a nickel for each paper mache carton.

We wore clothes with patches. Everyone did those days. Shit, I remember a kid whose pants were more patch than pants. I was especially hard on knees and butts, and I’d get jeans so tough and hard (to play in) that they chafed my balls something awful.By the time I outgrew them, they had just worn enough to be comfortable. I had shoes to go to school/church in, that had to be polished every week on saturday night, and shoes to play in, that were usually last years school shoes, pinched and tight and crudely re-soled by dad.

Dad worked side gigs when he could for extra cash, sometimes helped some farmer with haying in exchange for a side of beef. He hunted, a couple of shells he reloaded time and time again, walking afield with two shells and as often coming back with four or five quail.
Continue Reading »

Kim Du Toit(retired, semi) has a piece today about the stupidity of teaching Intelligent design, and I can’t but agree.

The idea that a single creator came into being and then, out of thin air, created everything, all at once, (or, for that matter, in seven days, which amounts to the same thing) is ludicrous. It’s ludicrous in the extreme, frankly, and the idea that children be taught this is pure and simple bullshit.

The only thing we know is true, is that the universe operates by a set of defineable scientific laws.Laws of nature, if you will, which include the mathematical, chemical, biological, behavioral, etc. etc. etc. We can state with some certainty that modern man (and all other creatures) have come into being through the process of natural law.

The only question I have for Kim, is this:

Who is the author of natural law? If you expect me to believe that natural law as it is, with all it’s complexity and sophistication, simply sprang into existence on it’s own, from whole cloth, all at once, then my bullshit detector starts to ring like mad. Personally, that’s just, well, bad science. Like believing in spontaneous generation. Here’s an undeniable fact: That there was a mind behind the creation of natural law is as likely if not more so, than the idea that natural law simply sprang into existence on it’s own. Like midaeval folks belived that piles of old clothes would spontaneously generate rodents. Kim draws an analogy to goldfish in a goldfish bowl. The water keeps getting changed, so one is convinced there is a god. Obviously, there isn’t, there’s a higher power who is changing the water. The point is, just as the water gets changed, so are there sets of natural laws that exist. Is it beyond our understanding what those laws are? you bet it is. does that mean that the author of those natural laws is divine? I don’t know.

The water keeps getting changed, in any event. Just as the natural laws continue to exist and function.

I examine the world no differently than an atheist, I am more convinced of the scientific based than faith based process of anything. I do know this: there are subtle clues all over, and in every scientific discipline, that there was an awareness behind creation, and that awareness has left those clues for us to follow.

Just my humble opinion.

Steve H, a bright, funny, and thoughtful blog you should be reading, has an excellent piece up today.

It’s brilliant demonstrably true, and impossible to argue with, unless you’re a fucktard of the highest order. Go read it now.